The wind had a memory,
It told me of things that had never been said,
Storms of history, ancient runes, broken, dismembered,
Then thrown into my face in spume. ‘Saat.’
The sickle edged moon etched,
Acid formed in the backdrop of my world.

I still see the images as though projected on a wall screen or a plasma T.V. set, super clear and detailed, the single gold fish in a bowl leaving an iridescent slick as it moved, the white screens around my bed. I can still smell the coal tar disinfectant permeating the air, the matron all in white, large in stature. I compare her now to a Spanish Galleon in full sail. I remember her name, Sister Pump. I was seven years old, my tonsils had been removed. A fashionable operation at that time.

I was in “Airlie” Private Hospital, Ivanhoe, Melbourne, a few minutes walk from my home.

It is now 64 years later, and as I write I have in my hands a series of recently obtained documents, one of them being my original certificate of birth. It is an old scrunched up photo copy. I see the name of the Sister in attendance at my birth, Sister Pump. I see my birth mother’s name(s). She was twenty seven years of age and she lived in another State.

I was named after the hospital.

AIRLIE —- was my name!

So it was to be. I was kept in the hospital under the control of a lawyer who acted on my mother’s behalf. And then Mr. And Mrs. Morgan came along. I was the chosen one. Airlie (I gather Airlie was a Scottish place name) became Michael. I then lived a life in a gilded cage.

Paper clipped to the tattered birth data are the documents and affidavits that explain “the social” reasons for my mother having her baby away from her home town. She stated that she had a child about eight years old and that she would start up a fund for my upkeep until after I was adopted or placed in care.

I recently traced my birth mother’s movements until I was the age of nine, then all documentation seems to stop. No new marriage certificates, no death certificates, no change of name certificates, it seems to be a void. My birth father, because of his position, refuses to give information and here I continue to muse. There is a lot more to tell, I may do so.

Some question why I bother with this so-called “baggage, it’s just a form of psychoneurosis they say.” Such sophistry does not bother me. Rightly or wrongly a simple word is the key to my searches. Lies. They seem to dominate life and more and more I seek the truth. I have experienced loss, redemption, and discovered riches beyond my wildest dreams. I will continue the quest.

Common speech, (if you can call speech common) whatever that may mean, often uses the name of a creature or an animal to describe a human quality, and generally as a class they are warm, active, sensitive, and have redeeming features – but not always. How often you have an intuitive gut feeling that some one or something is a bit “off.” Such is the case with someone I met in my late teens. One of the few people that I could say disturbed me from the first introduction was Henry Snape Jukes (a pseudonym). I still shudder when I think of him.

Henry had a passion for Snails. He was deaf, more like a bird than a human, or the molluscs that he omnivorously devoted his time to. If you saw Henry in the day, his darting, jerking movements would draw your attention to him for an instant then you would forget him in about the same time, but a shadow image of him would surface back into your mind at the most importune moments. A presence kept returning like a dream image never to be erased. Henry, if you ever met him at night, seemed to change. Gone was the spasmodic twitch, the dry lips and the visually obvious dry, raspy tongue. The best way to illustrate this change would be to say that Henry “became moist.” A strange way to describe a person, I suppose, but the best way to convey the truth. He researched gastropods, drawing spiral shells, flat shells, rounded shells into one of his hundreds of notebooks. This he did every evening and then he would go wandering into the wetlands. He was secretly thrilled that one area was called Helix Park, such apt synchronisation. This haunt gave him order and contentment. A box hedge coiling to the right. Dextral, that was when talking about shells. Sinistral when going counter clockwise. Such terms made Henry feel important. He knew what they meant, he had his own agenda.

The food was prepared, the table set. It looked like a subject for a Renoir or Bonnard. Just luscious to look at. Time for a relax, guests due to come at 7 p.m. Divine aromas of luscious food cooking permeated the atmosphere. Bliss!!

The guests arrived on time. The first drink was poured and then we heard the fire siren, and then another. The hills around reverberated with the sound.

Oh no!… I was a member of the voluntary Country Fire Authority.

Hearing those sirens, I made up my mind; “Sorry folks I have to go, enjoy, I won’t be long.”

Driving carefully to the tin shed Fire Station took one and a half minutes. Park, throw keys on floor, grab yellow coveralls, hat, goggles, large handkerchief, pull on boots.

For fifty years every April llth, my birthday, I have taken from my bookshelf a small, blue, relief stamped volume, entitled “Life of Frank Buckland,” printed by Nelson. Not a great book, but fascinating, a grand opening to a new world for a young man obsessed with learning.

When I open this book it is with rememberance more than nostalgia, in fact reverence, that I view the inscription “From F. Thomas to Michael on his 12th birthday, April 11th 1952.”

I have always been blessed in my life when all seems to be a struggle, when creative drive goes, when the daily news of world events begins to overwhelm, my guardian angel gives to me the gift of a situation, or person, to transform and regenerate my life. Frederick was such a gift. A mentor and someone who has always inspired me.

I was absolutely hopeless with mathematics – numbers, figures, adding up, multiplying, subtracting, dividing. I might as well be dealing with Aramaic, Hebrew or Chinese.

My touching a 3000 B.C. surface gives an earth perfumed energy to my soul.
Put next to my cheek the temperature of time gone makes me travel to a sacred land.
In my minds eye, I see a wonderful breathing light.
Did that Macedonian Greek, the last Pharaoh in Egypt, see the snake form, birds and dolphins portrayed and crafted on the floor?
Did her ecstatic body, soft contoured, lie between the phallic pillars as the sound of the sea enhanced a graceful serenity?
Was the asp that killed her represented here?
A portent before or after the event?
My treasure held in my hand from the place meaning “revealed”
projects scenes and characters into my mind.
Dreams and legend.
Evocation.
A fantasy world and a microcosm of past reality.
It is a talisman for my being.